Julia Child and Jacques Pepin on Fat in the Diet

Friday January 29, 2010

I listen to a lot of cooking shows and podcasts. The other day I came across a radio show called “Mouthful”which was rebroadcasting a show from 1999 with Julia Child and Jacques Pepin about food and cooking in the U.S. I got a kick out of the parts of the interview when they talked about fat:

The interviewer asked Julia about the effects of the "Fat Police":

Julia Child: "I think it's terrible what fear of fat has done to a lot of our industries. They have ruined the beef industry. We now have second class beef. Only two per cent of our beef is prime, and it's all because of these 'fear of fat people'. They don't want to eat a marbled steak, so it means that the beef has very little flavor any more. It's really something. A lot of people will say, 'oh, I don't like beef very much anyway' and no wonder, because they've ruined it."

Q: What about pork?

Julia: "And they've ruined pork as well."

Jacques Pepin: "When I first came to this country [from France] people liked butter on their bread, and it was fine. Now we are 30% fatter than we were then. After 15 years of torture and total obsession about fat, we are 30% fatter."

Julia (describing a TV interview with a "diet expert"): "He was one of those diet doctors who didn't eat any fat at all...he was a yellowish greenish looking man. He died fairly early...if he'd had a decent meal or two, he might still be around....The thing is: Don't pay any attention to those people at all."

Article from http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/b/2010/01/29/julia-child-and-jacques-pepin-on-fat-in-the-diet.htm